


A Change of Clothes

by musamihi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:33:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim and Molly both glide over the lies at the center of their relationship - Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty - but there's something else, too, that's never seemed quite right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Change of Clothes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [come_at_once](http://come_at_once.livejournal.com) challenge, Round 2, over at Livejournal, for the prompt: _guilty conscience_.

The slim black lines running up the backs of her stockings are slightly askew, not quite parallel. They sway under her short, swinging skirt as she walks up the stairs to her flat, and he's behind her, imagining them meeting in the darkness between her legs. The movement of her hips is a touch unsteady, exaggerated by the way she walks in her new, tall, tottering shoes, and with every step he rages for her, longing to feel the delicate structure of her waist between his hands. He hasn't been able to stop staring all night. There's always been something about Molly that he wants, and he wants it desperately; what it is, he's never certain. A path to Sherlock Holmes, sure; sex, of course (the way she likes to sit in his lap and pretend they're not both just aching for it sometimes wakes him up at night); but there's something else, something that until he met her he hadn't missed, or perhaps had forgotten long ago.

She digs her keys out of her large, yellow handbag, turns the key in the lock, and clicks in on narrow heels through the open door. Jim follows, close, and immediately nudges her up against the quantity of jackets, raincoats, pullovers hanging from the rack on the foyer wall. He's been waiting since he put his hand on her knee in the cab – since she crossed her other leg on top of it, trapping him – to get into her. She props herself up with one hand on the little table where she keeps keys and magazines and lets him slide his leg between her knees, tilts her face up for him when his thumbs find his way beneath her chin, kisses him even as she's being swallowed by the folds of her winter greatcoat. The nylon clinging to her thigh is hot, damp with sweat, and slips along the fabric of his trousers as though it's trying to guide him home. He's breathless with the soft, swelling pressure of her small breasts against his ribcage.

He breaks the kiss to look down as he pushes the almost gauzy fabric of her skirt over her hip, because he loves the way the stockings gleam a little in the dim light coming from the kitchen, the easy, giving texture of the cloth that makes complex, irreproducible creases and valleys along the lines of her body. And he sees her face, too, with its delightfully open play of emotion – he can see nearly everything about her, and he loves that. There are times when she closes off, when something falls over her face like a rolling door, and he knows it must be because there's something she wants to hide from him, but he can't imagine what it is – and he loves that even more. He thought at first it might just be guilt – she's using him as surely as he's using her, if rather more innocently – but she shows _that_ readily enough whenever Sherlock Holmes comes up in conversation, so it must be something else.

He's glad it isn't the guilt. The guilt is pedestrian, and unnecessary. He likes this, he likes _her_ , and just because the entire affair is a tool doesn't mean it ought to be regretted. All affairs are tools. He's glad it isn't the guilt she's hiding, because it means perhaps she's hiding something worth unburying.

They're both tipsy. Her breath smells of wine as it rushes past the side of his face. His fingers hook over the waistband of her stockings, his hand draped with the skirt that's crowded up around her waist, and it all feels so perfect on his skin that for a moment, a moment of his pounding pulse and a new weight filling between his legs, he wants to be her. 

He wants to be her.

"Wait," Molly breathes, pushing herself off the wall and leaning in to suck at his earlobe as she extracts his hand slowly from her clothes. "Hold on, go – go make yourself comfortable." She smiles that sheepish, sharp smile that must pass in her mind for mischievous, and nods toward the bedroom. "I have to get the cat fed or he'll be a terror, but I'll be – I won't keep you waiting."

"In the interest of peace," Jim murmurs, and lets her go, his hand and then his eyes lingering where her skirt's caught up in the elastic at her waist. Molly heads for the cat food, leaving her shoes behind – rather gratefully – in the middle of the hallway. Jim heads for the bedroom, but he slows as he passes them – silver, spindly like knives or icicles, a paradox of fragility and structure – with something like regret. When he sits on the bed to wait he slides his own shoes off, and they land like clumsy blocks that he would really rather shove beneath the bedskirt. He tugs off his cheap, somewhat wrinkled tie, unbuttons his collar, and runs his hand along the front of his throat as though kneading out the tension.

Molly's as good as her word, and half a minute later her little stocking feet are poised between his as she leans down to kiss him, her hands pushing through his hair. His hands are on her ass and he wonders as he slides the stockings and her flimsy black lace panties down over her hips whether he'll have her lipstick on his face the way he did last time, when he went to the bathroom after to clean up and stared for almost five minutes at his dishevelled, flushed, pink-smeared reflection. He moans against her mouth, opening for her.

She straddles him; he feels her shift as her bare thigh comes into contact with his belt buckle, and he grabs her and pulls her flush against him, reveling in the little gasp of mingled discomfort and arousal before she begins to grind against the erection beneath his trousers. The stripping isn't languorous, but it isn't frantic, and it's four or five slow minutes before all the clothes have been banished to the floor and it's just the two of them in their two skins, and Jim, as he always does, pores over as much of hers as he can with a longing mouth, studying the shape of her nipples while she scratches at his back and he feels like maybe part of him will peel away, licking her cunt, light and defiantly teasing even as she pulls his hair and moans and begs with sweet sounds that are not his name. In the end she's on her side, and he's pressing his face into the verbana scent of her hair as he buries himself deep inside of her and stays, rocking behind her, reluctant to let even an inch of space creep between them.

Their hands are tangled between her legs, his fingers playing with damp hair and soft skin and, when he's lucky, eliciting a perfect little whimper. "Molly," he sighs, when the pleasure at the base of his spine pushes it out of him. She's sliding and tightening around him like they're one piece. "Good girl."

 

Something freezes in her face. Her eyes slit open, and behind the stiff, fixed façade she's struggling to keep in place, guilt seems to pool like dregs in the bottom of a glass. Jim's body stops in surprise, an unexpected thrill.

"No," she laughs, weakly, trying to pass it off. "No, I'm really not."

"All right." If she wants to pretend it's nothing, he's game. They gloss over everything all of the time – why not this? It's only Sherlock. It's only guilt. He grins and whispers in her ear. " _Bad_ girl, then." But her expression only intensifies, threatening to crack under the strain of her effort, and Jim's smile drains away, the surprise turn no longer enticing. His hand slides away from the heat between her legs to rest on her hip, cooling, clammy in the air. "Sorry." He lets himself drop a little from where he's been propped up on his elbow, and looks away for a moment. "You don't like it, it's –"

"No, I do, it's just …"

But she doesn't say any more. And Jim supposes he's underestimated her guilt, the strength of her desire to be truthful. The two of them together is a lie, but something about these moments of intimacy, something about nakedness and lying open and sharing bodies, makes the lie less tolerable. He doesn't understand. It's all the same to him; perhaps it's because he hardly feels naked. In a pair of jeans, in a suit, in nothing but the skin that covers him, he feels he's hiding something, has always been hiding something, has hidden something for so long he doesn't really remember what it is, if it's anything at all. He envies her the secret part of herself that she refuses to share – whatever it is, that part of her that makes her face close off and that she refuses to allow to escape her eyes – because it must be _something_. He recognizes on her face and in all faces the masks that he wears, but beneath them all there's something he can't grasp, or has lost. And he wants it.

For now, he drops the last layer of artifice that he can, leaning in close to tell her in his own voice: "It's all right." He has nothing to lay bare to her but an emptiness that doesn't even really feel like it belongs to him, but if she wants it, he gives it away pretty cheaply.

She softens. He doesn't know what he's said or done to make her relax, and he wishes not for the first time that he could get inside of her to understand. She slides off of him and a throbbing ache pushes through him at the sudden absence, but then she's back, forcing herself against him with a renewed energy, gasping and biting at his mouth as though determined to get to the heart of him. Maybe they see each other a little more clearly when he rolls her onto her back and she twines her legs around his hips and gives him a smile that seems less guilty than remorseful – maybe they see a bit of themselves in each other as they fuck, her hands entangled in the headboard and his knees seeking slipping purchase on the sheets as he slams desperately into her, chasing that release – because it seems to him that they are closer. She's almost like clothes against his skin, like something that could be his without seeming wrong, perverse, stolen. 

And when she comes and bucks against him, her mouth with its smeared lipstick stretched open with desire, he digs his fingers sharply into her side and he swears to God he can almost feel the pain himself.


End file.
